China executes drug offenders

Yesterday, China showed the world what makes its antidrug efforts so wildly successful in the minds of narcowarriors like former DEA agent Michael Levine, who praised Beijing’s crackdown methods in his 1991 book, “Fight Back.”

In observance of the United Nations’ antidrug day, Chinese officials executed more than 50 drug offenders in various provinces across the country. The day before, gearing up for the big kill I suppose, the official Xinhua News Agency reported that the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing knocked off 18 people charged with drug trafficking.

AP’s tally of Tuesday’s crop wasn’t as succinct as Xinhua’s death toll for Monday. Associated Press bounced around between 43, 56, 59 and the pleasantly vague “dozens.”

Overlooked by many, the official U.N. theme for the day was “Sports, not drugs.” Guess something got lost in the translation to Chinese. Keep this confusion in mind next time you hear about Beijing bucking for the Olympic games; if it gets them, you’d better bring your flak jacket to the 100 meter dash.

The strange thing was that, while China was busy simultaneously dealing with its drug and population problems, Reuters was reporting that “The United States’ use of the death penalty has nearly isolated the world’s superpower among western democracies and could make it more difficult for Washington to pursue its own human rights agenda. …”

Excuse me?

Perhaps in anticipation of adding insult to irony, the U.S. got bumped off the U.N. Human Rights Commission in May. That was the insult. The irony is that China is still aboard the commission, regardless of how many drug offenders it kills.

As part of the antidrug hoopla in Yunnan province Tuesday, thousands of people rallied in a stadium to watch 20 alleged drug traffickers get sentenced to death. The whole lot was dragged to a separate location directly afterwards and immediately executed. According to AP, such executions “are usually done by a gunshot to the head.” Saves rope, I guess.

Because most of the mob couldn’t make it to the festivities – which included a pyrotechnic show of exploding heroin stashes – the government TV network decided to prove that Nero’s Colosseum survives in spirit by broadcasting the spectacle.

It’s one of the wonders of geopolitical correctness that a nation which doesn’t murder its citizens in honor of a U.N. holiday is bounced from a “human rights” commission, while a nation that sentences citizens en masse for celebration and rushes them out back for a case of immediate lead poisoning is cheered.

The U.S. is “nearly isolated.” China is happily included in the global glee club.

Don’t try to make any real sense of it. It doesn’t matter how many you kill or why, just so long as you suck up to the globalists.

China, AP reported, has “executed hundreds of people since April in a crime crackdown labeled ‘Strike Hard’ that allows for speeded up trials and broader use of the death penalty.”

Hardly noted for its treasured opinion of civil liberties, doubtless many victims of the crackdown are genuinely innocent. Worse, don’t even think about life drawing out during a lengthy appeals process, in which you still have a chance of proving your innocence (even if you’re guilty as sin). China spares all the melodrama and pops you right away.

Levine points to this sort of thing with approval. His book, “Fight Back” – billed as “How to take back your neighborhood, schools, and families from drug dealers” – praises China’s efforts to go heavy on drug addicts. Levine says that the U.S. has never tried any of Beijing’s surefire methods because “the United States is a ‘nation of individuals’ not capable of group actions carried out by Japan and China.”

Hogwash.

The reason is that, unlike Japan and China, the U.S. has a Constitution that forbids the kind of policing favored by to-the-death drug warriors. The founders established this nation under the notion that the law was a shield for the innocent. The Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments were included specifically for this reason. China has no use for these protections. And no use for liberty, either.

Last year, then-U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey worked with the Chinese government to hash out some sort of international agreement on dealing with illegal dope traffic. If Beijing pitched McCaffrey its usual trash, I sincerely hope someone lost his notes.

Forget the founders, some idiot at the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy or the DEA is bound to think it’s a swell idea.